Now That the Canes Football Team Is Good Again, Racists Continue Calling the Players "Thugs"

After Saturday night's 28-10 undressing of the No. 13 Virginia Tech Hokies, the Miami Hurricanes are officially back on the college football map. The huge win moved the Cane up two slots in the AP rankings to No. 7 and kept them steady in the coaches' poll at No. 6. Right now, winning is the Miami Hurricanes business, and business is good.

But a lot of fans outside South Florida can't seem to handle it when the Canes are good — and for whatever reason, many have resurrected the long-lost racist meme of insisting the UM squad is full of "thugs."

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Flat-out ignorance, old-fashioned stereotyping, or run-of-the-mill racism are the only logical explanations for why Canes players have consistently been put down as "thugs" since the '80s. There is truly no other rationale for such a pattern.

"The truth is that 'thug' today is a nominally polite way of using the N-word," John McWhorter, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, recently told NPR. "Many people suspect it, and they are correct. When somebody talks about thugs ruining a place, it is almost impossible today that they are referring to somebody with blond hair."